Naver announced recently a new small change to their security settings that will affect users who choose to receive their Naver Mail inside a 3rd party app, such as having G-mail retrieve their Naver Mail or have an app like Thunderbird or Apple Mail retrieve it. This will not affect you if you prefer to use the Naver Mail app itself.
Naver now requires an application specific password for these 3rd party apps to access Naver Mail, which in turn requires you to enable 2-factor authentication on your Naver account.
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| Naver announcement regarding app specific passwords |
This was actually announced months ago but I kept forgetting about it until today I realized I didn't get mail send to my Naver account and was in a bit of trouble for it. So I figured I'd better hurry up and fix this and let others know too.
Explanation of new password
If you have no clue what I'm talking about: You can't use your normal Naver password anymore to get your Naver e-mails outside Naver. You need to generate a new extra password that you'll use just for that one app. You can do that inside your Naver account settings. And as a bonus, all of this is possible in English.
But first, if you haven't already set up 2FA, Naver requires you to do that first. That's the thing where you get a verification code sent to the main Naver app on your phone whenever you try to log-in to Naver somewhere else.
I wish they supported standard token-based 2FA so I could add it to my password manager, but it is what it is.
How to set up 2FA on Naver account?
First make sure you have Naver app installed on your phone and are logged in. Then go to your Naver account settings on your PC (or phone, whatever) and navigate to Security > 2-Step Verification > Manage.
Or just visit directly at: https://nid.naver.com/user2/help/2StepVerif?m=viewManageSettings
From here you can enable 2FA. You'll get a notification on your phone to allow it. Now your Naver account can only be logged into via the codes sent to your device... except if you log in using one of the passwords we are going to generate now. That's the whole point of these, they are for apps/programs/services that cannot support 2FA.
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| Naver 2FA and App Passwords settings |
So now you have set up 2FA codes to your phone, and only after that is set up will you see this option as shown above for "Application Password" settings. Click that.
Application Specific Password generation
Down at the bottom here, choose a label for the password. It can be anything you want, "iOS", "G-mail", or just make your own label in the "Direct" box. It doesn't matter. It's only for you to help keep track of things.
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| Naver's App Specific Password generation |
When you click that green Generate button, you'll see a new password appear in the box below. Copy it now. You will only get this one single chance to see it. You cannot view it again later.
Below this (not visible in the screenshot above, whoops), there will be a list of all the extra passwords you have generated with this method. It's not a big deal if you mess up or forgot to copy it. Just delete them from that list, and generate a new one.
Once you have that new password, go ahead and edit your G-mail settings (or whatever app you are using) to update the password for your Naver account credentials it uses. In G-mail, you can find that here: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/accounts
Sending/receiving Naver Mail in G-mail or any other mail program
If you never set this up at all and are curious about how to access your Naver Mail in a way that's more comfortable for you, check out my old post which still works:
Send/Receive Naver Mail in G-mail
This is nice for seeing your incoming Naver Mail right inside G-mail, but it works with POP3 which doesn't really synchronize. So depending on your workflow you might be better off accessing Naver Mail via IMAP through a different app. I don't believe G-mail lets you import from other services via IMAP. The G-mail app on a mobile device should, but that's basically using 2 different accounts (G-mail and Naver) in one app. G-mail on the web cannot do this AFAIK. So consider a dedicated desktop client for this to keep the workflow ease of getting all mail in one feed and keeping replies and conversations organized respectively.
So if you haven't been seeing any Naver Mail arrive in your inbox lately, this might be why.
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